The Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board Ruling: “A Day That Will Live in Glory” – Timeless – Library of Congress

August 22, 2026

Sidewalk Scene, Selma, Alabama Walker by thegetty is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

The official portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court of 1953-54. Chief Justice Earl Warren is seated, center.

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The Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board Ruling: “A Day That Will Live in Glory”

August 20, 2026, Posted by: Neely Tucker

-This article also appears in the May/June issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, which focused on momentous events in the nation’s first 250 years.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, 1954, was one of the most consequential decisions in American history and is exhaustively documented at the Library. A unanimous court emphatically ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling — the basis for legalized segregation in the United States — was a false premise and always had been.

“We conclude that in the field of public education ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in his opinion, underlining the last phrase in his reading copy. Then he delivered the hammer blow, underlining the entire next sentence: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Chief Justice Earl Warren added “unanimously” onto his reading copy to make sure the public grasped the full depth of the opinion as soon as he read it, as well as underlining key passages for emphasis. Manuscript Division.

The case, though focused on public schools, would apply to every facet of American life. No more “Colored Only” water fountains. The nation was entering a new era.

“Dear Chief: This is a day that will live in glory,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote to Warren in a short, handwritten memo. “It is also a great day in the history of the court.”

That the court had to issue another ruling the next year, saying the nation should integrate “with all deliberate speed,” and yet another in 1969, after more than a decade of civil rights upheavals across the country, demanding that integration take place “immediately,” showed how deeply (and violently) embedded segregation was in American society.

*Warren’s annotated copy of the Brown v. Board decision, from which he read his opinion in court. Manuscript Division.*

But back in 1954, Warren had not written in his opinion that the verdict was unanimous. It was critical that the nation understand that, he thought, so he penned it alongside the typewritten text in his reading copy, reminding him to say, “Therefore, we unanimously hold …,” when reading it aloud in court to a breathless, waiting nation.

He later recalled the electricity that shot through the room: “When the word ‘unanimously’ was spoken, a wave of emotion swept the room; no words or intentional movement, yet a distinct emotional manifestation that defies description.”

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